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Troubled by the questionable use of tobacco-tax revenue on grants to fund advocacy for local smoking bans, Colorado lawmakers have decided to ask the Joint Budget Committee to make state health department officials—who disburse tobacco tax money—report those grants as budgetary line items for better tracking and oversight. A legislative ...

Friday's ed news: 1. How the fiscal cliff deal affects education spending. 2. Virginia's governor wants to grade schools A-F, host Teach for America, and give struggling students iPads and more tutoring. 3. People learn and accomplish less when working in groups . 4. Another Texas district uses GPS trackers on students --but with ...

In the latest confirmation of what is perhaps the most stunning energy-related development in decades, the Paris-based International Energy Agency predicts the United States will become the world’s top oil producer by 2020. IEA says the same advances in hydraulic fracturing technology that recently unleashed the shale gas revolution ...

The election results have been certified, the fiscal cliff has been averted, and the world didn’t end. Now state lawmakers are heading back to their state capitols to begin their 2013 legislative sessions. States are expected to face many important issues this year, including Medicaid expansion and balancing their budgets ...

Climate Change Weekly #75 Global warming will benefit most Arctic and sub-Arctic species, a team of scientists report in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One . The scientists found global warming will allow most Arctic and sub-Arctic species to expand their ranges, and no species are expected to go extinct. The study delivers a ...

A Wisconsin man who can’t pay almost $100,000 in overdue child support and interest for the nine children he fathered has been sentenced to probation and ordered not to have any more kids until he can support all of them. The man fathered the children with six women and pled guilty to charges of bail jumping, a felony ...

Colorado is currently considering whether to expand Medicaid under President Obama’s health care law, which radically restructures federal subsidy programs for medical care. The state has decided to create an ObamaCare state-run health insurance exchange, and many individuals currently covered by Medicaid will be better off with ...

The fiscal cliff deal did virtually nothing to solve the government's fiscal problems. Bill Wilson of Americans for Limited Government says there will soon be a debt ceiling debate, and enough lawmakers are frightened by the size of the government's borrowing that our voices added to the debate might swing some votes toward ...

A new report written by one of the nation’s leading authorities on groundwater hydrology and nuclear energy says uranium mining in Virginia can take place safely and with minimal environmental impact. At issue is a plan to lift a moratorium on uranium mining that has been in place in Virginia since 1982. The Coles Hill uranium ...

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo missed a Nov. 29 deadline to finalize long-awaited hydraulic fracturing regulations. The missed deadline left state residents uncertain whether and when they would join the current shale gas revolution that is creating jobs and wealth in nearby states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio. Panel Studies Health ...

Were they unusual during the 20th century? No, not during the past two millennia, as this study suggests that modern warming cannot be distinguished from warming induced by “natural processes,” which ultimately suggests there is no compelling reason to attribute modern warming to anthropogenic CO2 emissions... Read More
Cyanobacteria ...

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon has allowed a lawsuit seeking an injunction by R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard Tobacco to proceed against the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee. It alleges a conflict of interest on the scientific panel responsible for regulating tobacco products. FDA officials asked Judge Leon to ...

Voters elected Teresa Rogers, a parent who helped pull a Parent Trigger in Adelanto, California, to the district’s school board. That school board had opposed parents’ efforts to convert a failing school under its purview into a charter school. It took a lawsuit, but parents won. “We need to change the culture of the schools ...

A bill to create a state health insurance exchange in Michigan in compliance with President Obama’s health care law was rejected by the state House of Representatives Health Policy Committee. With the committee’s 5-9 vote on Nov. 30, Michigan now looks likely to form a “partnership” exchange managed primarily by the U.S. Department ...

Adults who speak English poorly lose $3,000 per year in wages, which totals $37.7 billion annual loss in U.S. earnings, concludes a new report from the Lexington Institute. Institute president and report coauthor Don Soifer joins the podcast to talk English language learners and their growing impact on public schools and ...

First established as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Federal Universal Service Fund was designed to provide telephone service to underserved areas of the country. Soon after, individual states began to launch universal service funds to target underserved areas in their states. USFs use fees applied to telephone ...

Michigan voters sent a strong message to the U.S. renewable energy industry, rejecting a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have forced consumers to purchase 25 percent of their electricity from so-called renewable sources by the year 2025. Proposition 3, also known as 25x25, would have required consumers to purchase ...

Though 46 states will spend an estimated $5 to $12 billion to implement a new set of national education standards called the Common Core, public officials are arranging these standards in hundreds of closed-door meetings. Meetings between members of the Council of Chief State School Officers to write and discuss these standards ...

HAZLEWOOD, MISSOURI — In response to the December school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, more than two dozen Missouri Republicans are cosponsoring a bill that would allow teachers and administrators to carry guns into public schools if they have a concealed-weapon permit. “They are the people that we already entrust to educate ...

Georgia voters have approved an amendment to the state constitution that allows the General Assembly to authorize charter schools even if they have been denied by local school districts. Constitutional Amendment One won 58 percent to 41 percent in the November 6 election. Groups including the Georgia School Boards Association ...

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